


Problems Aboard the Skeld

by mysteriousStarlight



Category: Among Us (Video Game), The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-16
Updated: 2020-10-27
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:48:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27048226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mysteriousStarlight/pseuds/mysteriousStarlight
Summary: “Log Date: 0891205 - Statement begins.   Not much to report on today.  Elias had me pull samples for analysis, mostly gas with some dust particles.   I have dropped them off at the medbay, to be run later today.  This is the...” Jon paused to think for a moment. “...fifteenth such sample taken in as many weeks that we have been aboard the Skeld. Log ends.”
Relationships: Basira Hussain/Alice "Daisy" Tonner, Georgie Barker/Melanie King, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Sasha James & Tim Stoker
Comments: 7
Kudos: 32





	1. A Sample of a Regular Day.

“Log Date: 0891205 - Statement begins. Not much to report on today. Elias had me pull samples for analysis, mostly gas with some dust particles. I have dropped them off at the medbay, to be run later today. This is the...” Jon paused to think for a moment. “...fifteenth such sample taken in as many weeks that we have been aboard the Skeld. Log ends.” Jon ended the recording and pushed the device back into a pocket on his left leg. He sighed. 

“Are you done talking to yourself, boss?” came a voice from underneath his bunk.

“For the last time, I am not your boss, Tim.”

“Well if you could let Elias know that, that would be great.”

Jon rolled his eyes but nodded, nonetheless. He hopped down from his bunk, shaking the stiffness out of his limbs.

“Give me a little warning next time, would you?”

“Timber.” Jon said, in a deadpan voice. He left the room, shaking his head.

“Wait-” called Tim from behind him. A head popped out the doorway. “Who’s on samples today?”

“I believe that you are observing them today, and then collecting them tomorrow.” Tim nodded in response and pulled himself back in the door, out of sight.

Jon checked his watch as he made his way towards the cafeteria. He was a little bit early to be eating lunch, but only by a few minutes. He saw Captain Lukas slinking back towards the front of the ship. He flicked his hand over his watch and set a 43-second timer. He pulled up a table and set down his tablet to claim his seat.

3-

2-

1-

BEEP. 

The timer went off. He quirked an eyebrow slightly. He slid out of his seat, going up to gather some food. Martin, the cook, waved at him as he handed him a tray. He lifted his hand, opening his mouth to reply.

“Hey there, Jon.” called a voice behind him.

“You’re late.”

“By how much?” Basira responded. Jon’s eyes flicked down to his watch again. 

“Thirty-seven seconds.”

“Shame.” Jon nodded at her solemnly. She held back a small chuckle.

“Hello there.” acknowledged Martin, as she gathered her own tray.

“What’ve we got today?”

“Oh- Well it’s tomato soup and a meat-and-cheese sandwich. His has ham in it, yours is chicken.” Basira lit up at that. She gave Martina brief ‘thanks’ and worked her way over to the table Jon had claimed. The two of them sat down and Basira pulled up a book on her tablet.

“Anything new?”

“Not really. Just another rubbish mystery novel.”

“What, are you hoping for something a bit more exciting?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Can’t say I blame you there.” The two of them fall into a comfortable silence. Occasionally there is the soft ‘thunk’ of a hard-plastic spoon hitting the bottom of a soup bowl, but save for that, there is nothing.

After a few minutes, Tim crossed the cafeteria on his way to the medbay. He waved at Martin, who slipped out of the kitchen. Jon could see the two of them talking but was unable to make out the subject. Tim’s gaze slid over towards Jon and Tim stiffened. The conversation quickly ended, and Tim skirted out of the cafeteria. 

“Was I glaring again?” he asked, sliding his eyes back over to Basira. Her face was still firmly planted in her tablet, and she glanced up at him at his question. She shrugged.

“Probably.” At this, Jon sighed. He turned back to his soup, slumping down a bit. Martin stepped into the kitchen, before he strode over to their table. Martin sat down, his own tray in hand.

“Do either of you know what the button’s about?”

“The button?” came Jon’s response. He looked up at Martin with a confused expression.

“Over on that table in the middle. When Peter was in here earlier, he didn’t grab lunch, he was just over at the center table wiring up a button.” Jon followed Martin’s pointing finger over to the table in question. It was the center cafeteria table where they held meetings or ate “family” dinner. In the middle of it, covered with a small, clear box was a red button.

“...that’s odd.” called Basira. “He never mentioned doing anything like that to me.”

“I’m sure Captain Lukas knows what he’s doing.” responded Jon.

“Why do you call him that?”

“Call him what?”

“ _ Captain Lukas _ ” responded Basira, “It’s just Peter. No one else is still on with the titles and all that.”

“Well it would be unprofessional for me to-”

“Oh come off it.” She said with a roll of the eyes.

“For what it’s worth I also call him Peter.” Piped up Martin. He punctuated his sentence with a bite of sandwich. On the table next to Basira, her tablet lit up with a notification.

“It seems ‘Captain Lukas’ is paging me.” She said with a smirk. She grabbed the rest of her sandwich and wrapped it up in a napkin, trodding off towards the navigation room. 

“Would you prefer I leave you to it, or…?”

“You can stay if you like, Martin.”

“Ah. Right. … Good.” The two of them finished their lunch in no hurry. Occasionally Martin would get a message from Tim or Sasha, and he would respond to it in kind. He tapped his foot on the floor, looking around. His eyes wandered from one place to the next, always pausing on Jon’s face whenever they passed him. Jon spent most of his lunch just staring into his soup. Occasionally he would glance up and see that Martin was looking at him, but Martin would very quickly stop looking at him anytime their eyes met. When the two of them had finished with their trays, Martin picked up both of them, and made his way back up to the kitchen, leaving Jon alone. Jon considered going back to his bunk for some peace and quiet, since Tim would likely still be busy in the medbay but decided against it. He instead opted against it. He didn’t want to ruin his sleep schedule. His eyes wandered over to his watch, seeing that back at home it would be 3 in the morning. 

“Oh, what’s a sleep schedule anyway.” He muttered, wandering off for a nap before dinner.

____________________________________________________________________________

Martin sent a page to the crew, informing them that dinner was ready. It was Friday evening, which meant tonight was “family” dinner. He set a pot of tea on the central table, minding the button that was near it. Trays were set out at everyone’s usual spot, pasta and vegetables on each tray, pieces of cake for dessert waiting back in the kitchen. The first to appear was Elias. This was typical. Regardless of when Elias was paged, he always managed to appear immediately, regardless of time. Elias sat down at the top of the table. He took a deep breath.

“Did you make cake for us too?”

“I did, actually. It’s red velvet.”

“Perfect.”

Melanie and Georgie appeared next, coming up from storage, their hands interlocked. Melanie still has one of her headphones in her ear, listening in for orders from base. With how far out they were, the orders had to be transmitted via radio, so it was Melanie’s job to keep one ear on those signals. Georgie planted a peck on Melanie’s cheek, excusing herself to wash the grease from her hands before supper.

Next Tim, Sasha, and Daisy came from the left side of the ship. “Sorry that took so long,” Sasha called “Tim was procrastinating on his samples.”

“You say that like you two were innocent in this.” muttered Tim.

“We were helping.”

“Yeah, helping me procrastinate, maybe.”

Basira came in next from navigation, alone. “Martin, Peter has asked if you’ll bring his dinner to the navigation room.” She mentioned, pointing behind her shoulder. “He’ll be eating alone tonight.” Martin nodded and pulled a tray off of the table. He disappeared off towards the navigation room. Basira piped back up. “No luck on getting him to explain the button.” She sat herself down, with a slow exhale. “I tried.”

The last member of the group, Jon, trailed after Martin as he returned from Navigation. Martin was rambling to Jon, who seemed to be listening quite intently, despite having woken up a max of 3 minutes prior. Martin and Jon sat down next to each other. They paused a moment for a few of them to fulfill their various traditions before they ate.

Elias rose almost immediately. He made heavy eye-contact with Martin and gestured towards the kitchen. Martin shrugged. Elias stood and grabbed the cake, bringing to out to the table. He cut himself a large slice and placed it on his tray. Daisy sat there, picking the carrots out of the mixed vegetables, setting them on Basira’s plate. Melanie and Georgie spoke with Tim, who was sitting near them. They were discussing the plot of a book the three of them had all recently begun reading.

“I dunno, I don’t think I like the implications of her being portrayed as ‘violent’, you know what I mean?” Georgie said. Both of them nodded in response. “It just seems really stereotypical.”

“Oh definitely.”

Elias stood up, having finished his cake. He walked off to the left side of the ship, leaving the rest of his meal at the table. Jon noticed a red light out of the corner of his right eye as the security camera flickered to life. The rest of their little “family” continued to eat dinner. Occasionally someone would steal some pasta or a piece of broccoli from Elias’ untouched plate. Comfortable conversation fluttered between the 8 of them. Someone laughed, but there was enough merriment in the air that no one could quite tell who. ____________________________________________________________________________

Sasha was getting really tired of observing samples. Take the space dust. Put it in a vial. Look at it. Add reagent. Look at it again. Repeat. It was the most repetitive job that you could be doing in space. At least when they get to headquarters, they’ll have a proper laboratory. As is, they were just co-opting the lab equipment in the medbay for whatever Elias wanted of these samples. She wasn’t honestly even sure what they were looking for. 

_ “We will be looking for anomalies within the samples we take”  _ He’d said. Anomalies? What would that even mean? She put another batch of samples in for the first step in testing: checking for carbon and water. At least this step she understood. If they were to find life forms even remotely similar to those on earth, both of those would have to be present. She moved the previous batch to the microscope to take a glance at them. Dust. Dust. More Dust. Good. 

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! She turned around at the loud noise. One of the samples had been lit with a red light. ‘Reaction successful’ the display above the samples read. She pulled the window aside. She pulled her tablet out of her left thigh pocket and paged Elias. Within moments Elias was striding into the medbay. He removed his white helmet and set it down on one of the beds.

“What seems to be the problem here, Ms. James?”

“We’ve found an anomaly in the samples.” She replied, gesturing to the lit test tubes to her right. Elias grinned. He pulled out his tablet and hit a button. The medbay doors slammed shut. “What’s that about?” she queried. 

“I would not like to be interrupted. This could be something exciting, and I want to devote my full attention to this and nothing else.” At this, Sasha nodded. Elias pulled the sample from the window, using an eyedropper to prepare a microscope slide. She sat down on the bunk next to Elias’ helmet, watching him work. He peered into the microscope, and his eyes and his smile grew even wider. “Perfect. Absolutely perfect.” He muttered, stepping aside so that Sasha could take a look as well. Within the microscope were a series of moving blobs. They didn’t look like anything that Sasha recognized. Her skill-set was focused more on geology than on biology, though, so that wasn’t a huge surprise. If she had to guess she’d say it was some sort of bacteria, but that was the closest she could get.

“So what does that all mean?” she asked, moving away from the microscope. 

“It means that we have more experiments to be running.” He said. He stepped behind her for a moment.

“So what sort of experi-“

CRASH!

Sasha felt a sharp throbbing pain in the back of her skull. She fell to the floor.

  
  



	2. Awakening

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings for this chapter: needles, body horror, blood

When Sasha awoke in the  medbay , she was now wearing her helmet. The face shield was foggy, and her head was throbbing. Tim and Martin were hovering over her . Tim’s face was stretched taught, and he had his hand laying on Sasha’s shoulder. Martin was  darting his eyes between Jon and Elias, who were  over at the microscope, talking  rapidly.  Jon was the only one in the room, save for Sasha, to still be wearing their helmet. 

“We should be handling the situation!” 

“ But there’s research to be done.” 

“We can’t have parasites running loose in the  Skeld . ” cried Jon,  “Do you know the problems that this could cause for the whole crew?” 

“If you’re so concerned, keep your helmet on. I doubt these “parasites” could get through that.” Elias, said to Jon, with a roll of his eyes.  Sasha sat up.  A groan slipped from her mouth, and Tim pressed her back down to the bed. She raised a hand in thanks and pressed the button on the side of her helmet to release it.  The lights from the no longer obscured room  seared into her eyes. She could hear the throbbing of blood in her ears. 

“It’s alright Sasha,” Tim spoke, his voice soft, “Just lay back down. You had a pretty bad fall.”

“I fell?” 

“Apparently you just collapsed .” He glanced over at Jon, who was standing on the  medbay scanner. Apparently, he had decided to check himself for parasites. “Elias said you just dropped to the ground mid-sentence.”

“Is… Is that what happened?” She asked. 

“As far as we know, yes.” Martin muttered, “But  none of us got in her e until after you were  already  unconscious.” Sasha nodded, her eyes squinting at the pressure in her head. She coughed slightly, let her head fall back onto the  medbay pillow. Martin stood up, “Well, I probably should let you rest, shouldn’t I?” He stood up before Sasha had a chance to protest.  _ Well. Nothing to do about it now. _ She let her eyes slip closed. 

When Sasha came back around a second time, Elias was once again the only one in the room with her. He had dimmed the lights, and her head thanked her in its relief from that prior pain. Elias nodded at her, observing the tablet in his hand. He jotted something down with his stylus, his hands rising and falling with his usual overdramatic cursive. He set it down at his side, turning on the recording software, before turning back to her. 

“State your name for the record.”

“Sasha James. ...why?” 

“Trying to ensure your memory is intact. Nothing more.” He grinned. “You’ve been quite active during your time away. And I wish to ensure your brain made the journey with you.” 

“Away?”

“Nothing surprising, of course. You responded to treatments exactly as expected.” At this, Sasha blinked a few times. She started to doubt her own comprehension of his words.

“Treatments?”

“Yes of course.”

“For my head injury?”

“Well, yes, that too. I did keep you under observation to ensure that you had no significant damage from that bump.” Elias hummed to himself, swiping through the notes that he had taken. “Anyway! Where are you, Miss James?”

“Aboard the Skeld.” 

“And where is the  Skeld ?” He asked. She glanced around. 

“We’re moving in a scale of lightyears per hour, Elias. I’m in research, not navigations, and have been unconscious for who knows how long. How should I know  exactly where we are?”

“Well I suppose that suffices. … I was just looking for the word ‘space’ for the record.” He flicked his eyes up and to the left briefly. “That was  most of my questions in one, truthfully. Let’s do short-term. What did we have for lunch?”

“ **_ We  _ ** had pasta,  **_ you  _ ** had cake.” 

“Spot on, Miss James.” He clicked off the recording. “I believe that answers all my questions. It seems your time away from your body has done you no ill effects. Congratulations. You’re free to go. I believe it is my turn to step away.” Sasha gave him a concerned glance. 

“Is that a fancy way of saying you need to sleep after observing me for so long?”

“Something along those lines. Nothing to worry about. You’re dismissed.” He shooed her away with a brush of his hand. She went to step out the door. “Oh, Miss James, if you would,” She quirked her head up at him. “Try to avoid going to sleep for a little while. We’d hate exacerbate your... “head injury.”” With that he pressed a button on his tablet and the door sealed shut behind her, locking her out of the medbay. Now barred from her main working space, she slipped off to go find Tim. 

____________________________________________________

Elias, now alone in the quiet  medbay , grinned to himself. He flicked on his recorder once more, speaking directly into the microphone. 

“Subject seemed completely unchanged. She doesn’t seem to have remembered any of the time of the creature’s control. Lastly, her body seems to have increased in both its durability and its ability to heal. According to the scan I conducted of her, the earlier concussion appears to have gone away completely over the course of about 3 hours.” He swapped the  medbay screen over to the results of her scan. “Unfortunately, the creature does seem to show up on the scans. Subject S-J will need to be barred from all future scans until the remainder of the crew can ascend as well.” He sighed, “It doesn’t help matters that Jon has convinced other members of the crew that this creature is a parasite. I will likely need to convince them that the creature has been eradicated. For the record! This creature is not a parasite! The relationship is symbiotic, and the benefits tend to fall on the side of the host. The host keeps the creature alive and allows it to feed, and the creature provides the human with increased strength, improved healing ability, and decreased cell death, which means increased life expectancy and slower aging.” 

He pulled aside a syringe, loading it with the sample. 

“It truly seems that the only drawback to this change is an increased need for protein. If this need is not met, the creature will incline the host to hunt while they are asleep. This can be easily worked around. There is plenty of powdered protein aboard the  Skeld . I just need to incorporate the protein into our water supply. This should keep the creature satiated. Given all this data, I feel inclined to avoid waiting any longer to apply this treatment to myself. Me and the creature will ascend past humanity together.” 

He cleaned off an area on the back of his left hand, grabbing the syringe with his dominant right hand. 

“This recording will also serve to document the effects of the creature entering a conscious host.” he stated for the microphone. He jabbed the needle into his hand, under the skin. Somewhere, in the part of his mind that was aware of things happening peripherally around him, he can hear himself hiss in pain. He presses the plunger down, injecting himself with the red fluid. When all the liquid has flooded into him, he ripped the needle back out of his own skin. 

“I’ve got no idea how Martin does that every week.” He muttered, clenching and unclenching his fist to try and shake the pain out. “Until Sasha’s trial I would have assumed that this would have bled, but it seems the fastest acting benefit of this new relationship is the inability to bleed.” He brought the injection site up towards his face. He brushed a thumb against the wound. A drop of red fluid escapes his hand, and he shuddered in fear. “It seems that either my guest, or my blood, is trying to escape me.” More of the fluid started to leak out, a translucent red. The parasite. 

“I need more. I need to reapply. If it won’t accept me as a host, it will just eat me.” His voice was quaking, and he looked around frantically, “I need to make it accept me.” He held the leaking hand over his face, letting it drip down onto his mouth and nose. He remembered the seizing that Sasha had undergone and was waiting for that. But he felt only a burning in his mouth and nose. 

He was being eaten. Dissolved. Acids and Enzymes from his would-be friend leaking out and melting the soft tissues of mouth. 

He grabbed the vial with the primary portion. All the creatures that they had ever managed to find, stored in 3.5 fluid ounces of reagent. The burning in his mouth rose in intensity, and he crumpled to the floor. His hands flew up to grasp at his face. The liquid flew out of the vial and landed on his eyes. The burning feeling ceased. He let his head lie back, resting against the cool tile of the floor. He’d done it. He could feel the first signs of seizing beginning, and his thoughts started coming slower and slower. Despite all that, he smiled.

“My friends. I’m surrounded by friends.” 


End file.
